Turkey summoned U.S. Ambassador David Satterfield saying it rejected U.S. President Joe Biden's reference to atrocities allegedly committed against Armenians as a "genocide."
Turkey is angry, calling Biden's statement "slander." Its foreign minister said his country wouldn't be "given lessons on our history from anyone," BBC and Reuters reported Sunday.
Biden's genocide declaration might signal a fracture in relations with Turkey - a longtime U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally.
Previous presidents have avoided using "genocide" in formal statements. President Ronald Reagan was the last U.S. leader to label the atrocities against Armenians as genocide in 1981.
"One-and-a-half million Armenians were massacred or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination," Biden said Saturday in a statement on the 106th anniversary of the massacre's start.
Armenia said it appreciated the U.S. president's "principled position" as a step toward the "restoration of truth and historical justice."
Turkey acknowledges that many Armenians living under the Ottoman Empire were killed in clashes under the empire's forces during the first world war. But it disputes the figures and denies the killings were systematically orchestrated and constitute a genocide.
Armenia says around 1.5 million of its people were killed. Turkey says the number of dead was about 300,000. Based on figures by the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the death toll was "more than a million."
The characterization is the fulfillment of a campaign promise that Biden made, who April 24 last year pledged to recognize the genocide if elected.
In a statement, Turkey's foreign ministry said the U.S. had opened "a deep wound that undermines our mutual trust and friendship."
"If the United States wants to worsen ties, the decision is theirs," CNN quoted Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu as saying.
